how to see something new.
Photography, as we all know, is not real at all. It is an illusion of reality with which we create our own private world.
Arnold Newman
Even when my camera is not in my hand, I am often thinking about it. Thinking about what I’m seeing and imagining how to see it differently. How to capture more than just the documentation of something. My views on photography have evolved over time and I hope that they will continue to do so because it leads me in new directions.
The digital era launched the term ‘photoshopped’ and I can remember feeling uncomfortable about images created digitally in a program. It wasn’t so much that I disliked them, although there were some trends I could do without, it was more my own personal desire to create as much as possible directly in the camera and then edit that single image. Perhaps that concept ages me. I still don’t own photoshop, but having grown up with film, I do recognize that the negatives also needed ‘development’.
As one who ‘paints with her camera’ I have grown fond of the multiple exposure setting available in many digital cameras today. I have found that it gives me the option of combining more than one element into a single image and has the ability to soften and give a more painterly style to what I am shooting. An added bonus was a growth in understanding the maximum ‘print’ capabilities existing in an image. When am I going to blow out the highlights and leave no more room for the second image to record in those places? Where do I need to position the darkest darks?
This old building, that the town has grown around, has been the subject for many an artist. My eye was drawn to it often but I did not want to simply replicate an image that had already been done…so I doubled it with a vibrant, reflective water scene. I think Newman’s quote sums it up nicely calling photography ‘an illusion of reality’.
Will it appeal to everyone, not likely! For me though, when I look at this image I am transported back to the moment that I took it… the feel, the weather, the light, and isn’t that what it’s all about?
it's (almost always) about the water... 
This is truly amazing!
Indeed! The double exposure adds great mystery to the structure.
Just wonderful, a painterly texture – I love it
Very well done , once again. I especially liked the last paragraph. It summed up everything you had said before, so well. I looked at the grainery before reading your piece and knew I had seen that building before. I really liked the effect you accomplished. Well done. Tomorrow I am putting the pictures into my computer that I have on the cards and will get myself ready to start taking some pictures!!! January 31, 2015